David Scarpitti, Massachusetts’ foremost turkey expert, to sort things out. The turkeys’ behavior is “unusual” and “really quite amazing,” he says. But he thinks he can explain it.

Turkeys, he says, are naturally fearful of cats, which can be a threat to younger, smaller birds. So it’s likely that, when they came across a dead one in the road, they were very curious to see what was going on, and whether it was alive.

At the same time, turkeys tend to follow a leader or two as they roam through suburban yards in search of food (they have a diet mostly of nuts, grains, and berries—no cats). So if one leader took it upon itself to march around the corpse and inspect it, it makes sense that the others would follow its lead, while keeping a safe distance from the fallen feline. Hence, a near perfect circle.